muertos de sed
by cimorene
Written at the request of mcee. In retrospect, while I can very well believe I wrote it, I frequently wish I hadn't. Also, I just can't stand to fix the capitalisation in the end of it - I'd delete it before I was through! So here you have a monument to my teenie years. Enjoy, if you can!
01.
Si ya es hora de limpiar
Las manchas de miel
Sobre el mantel
Yo nunca supé actuar
Mis labios se ven
Muertos de sed-Shakira
They go to the premiere not because Dom is drunk but in spite of this fact. Which is not to say that Elijah isn't drunk, or that he can hold liquor. he can't. but he wants to go anyway, whereas Dom, drunk, wants to go down pub and do nasty things with ranDom girls, possibly including Elijah and Billy, who can count as girls when you're drunk enough.
'It's not too bad,' says Billy, and then, ''S a bit like our premiere, eh--' speaking for all of them. It's almost a sense of deja vu, except that Daniel's mother is hovering in the background, and Emma is too young to want to hang all over her co-stars. She stands, like Hermione, with her shoes matched at the toe and heel and lifts her chin to answer the television interviewers. But still they can see it: that boy who played Draco, with the overbleached hair, giggling nervously with Rupert. They've never met any of these children before.
Daniel smiles nervously around, casting his blue eyes like a circle around his feet, and snags their attention. He looks down and his eyelashes drop like fans. His cheeks are just hinting at pink, without being gauche enough to go there. 'And he's you,' says Dom, too loudly, only Billy shushes him.
'Nah; the eyes aren't big enough.'
Elijah decides to leave the drunken friends to their own devices (he's drunk enough to ignore any misgivings on that score). 'Hello,' he says, and the pink held at bay rushes into the peachy pale cheeks, startled blue eyes leaping to meet startled blue.
'Erm. Hi,' says Daniel dumbly, with a smile that starts and ends artless, but becomes far more dangerously sparkling by the end than its shy beginnings would have suggested.
He's almost as tall as Elijah, and how old is that? But Elijah grins and says, 'I'm Elijah--'
'Oh, i know,' he breathes, stumbling the words out. 'Hey. Great job. Loved it.' He waves a hand behind Elijah, who doesn't look at whatever foolishness the other hobbits have involved themselves in while his back was turned.
Hm. With the hero-worship. Not so--but then Daniel's smile goes smirk, and he says, 'lost the invitation, did you? Yours is next month.'
'Maybe i've had a few too many,' Elijah agrees, putting out his hand like in a trance. the thirteen-year-old hand closes around it tentatively. They don't shake, but they look up again and their eyes meet and--
'Hello,' Daniel says inanely, raising both of his dark eyebrows over perfect eyes, and his little lips twitch. Elijah is smiling back and he means to reply, but what he says is
'Yes.'
02.
'So your mom doesn't care?' Elijah says, looking out of the corner of his eye at Daniel. He has to look down to do it, something he isn't used to.
A shrug of fine-boned little shoulders, and he shakes back an unruly shock of dark hair. 'As long as you're wearing clothes, you know, and aren't, like, asking me to autograph your stomach with a sharpie--'
'Not in FRONT of her,' says Elijah, scandalized, and receives a little giggle that makes his finger- and toe-tips warm. Holy shit. So they slip through one of those hallways that leads out to the back of somewhere and find themselves at a door, which Daniel holds open and leans against to let all the heat out into the sparkling clear night. Lijah nods approvingly, fumbling in his pockets.
'Maybe she wouldn't like it if you smoked in front of me, though,' says the younger boy contemplatively, nodding at the breast pocket. Ah yes. Elijah flushes and takes his hands out of his pants pockets, taps a cigarette out with not-shaking fingers and fumbles to light it while the boy watched with crossed arms and too-knowing eyes.
Count to ten until the jitters wear off and don't think about the cloud covering the moon which casts a shadow over the corner of his THIRTEEN YEAR OLD mouth. 'You're a bit like me,' Elijah says, putting his hands behind him on an iron railing. Next to them three dirty concrete steps lead down to a dirtier asphalt alley, the kind of place showbiz mothers don't like to think about.
Daniel nods. 'It's why she thinks you're a good example. This fame thing, it's all very--' He makes a round gesture with both hands, waving airily, and his big eyes go round to match. totally earnest, Elijah thinks. He knows how to make that face but he's wondering if it's a bit realer here, than his usually is. He can't precisely remember how he meant it at thirteen. '--I didn't do ANYTHING, you know,' Dan continues. 'To deserve it. It was just sort of, one day, BOOM. Mum wants me to work hard for it. It's sort of weird because one day you're an ordinary guy and then--'
Elijah knows that, all right. He hasn't smoked the half of the cigarette but he stomps it out under his heel and slides down to a crouch. When he looks at Daniel he squinches his eyes a little, like against a bright light or a wavy mirror image. Then the boy sinks to his knees too and all of a sudden they are the same height and their knees brush in two pairs of very small charcoal-colored dress pants.
With a little jolt Daniel slides down off of his haunches, sitting on his ass on the cold concrete with his legs folded up. One foot--in a patent shoe, tinier than Elijah's even--is just on the inside of Elijah's shoe. Touching. The gray blue eyes that meet his are unafraid. 'let's say we know each other,' the boy says with no hint of irony, though the corner of his soft lips might twitch a bit. 'And where's that sharpie?'
He wonders what a good example would say, while Daniel looks seriously at him, moonlit white face under those feathery-soft wild strands of crisply clean-straight-black hair.
03.
He happens to lick his lips as he's looking up, which means that Lij has to blink for a moment before the words process. '...Who should I sign it to?'
Why did he admit to having a Sharpie in his pocket?
One tail of his shirt is untucked; the bottom button is undone; Daniel Radcliffe is crouched between Elijah's spread knees with a crown of wan moonlight in his hair and a mischievous smile on his face, one small pale hand light on Elijah's stomach. It's more surreal than--than anything else. But he doesn't want them to move.
'I'm recognized,' Elijah croaked. Oops. Try again. 'I'm recognized pretty often without having my name written on my stomach, so--'
'To someone ELSE!' Dan finishes triumphantly, brandishing the uncapped sharpie. Not black: green. A whiff of magic marker smell goes to Elijah's head.
That, and nothing else, is what makes him put one hand on his shirt above Daniel's to push his shirt further up out of the way. The side of his pinky grazes Daniel's hand but the boy doesn't notice.
He doesn't bite his lips or lick them or anything when he's concentrating. a perfectly solemn face, tilted down a little, is what Elijah is looking at, just like out of a movie poster, only the moonlight draws years on it.
Maybe eight years, if he lets his eyes drift most of the way closed.
'There.'
He has written--Elijah has to crane his head to see--'Daniel's bitch.' Holy shit. Okay.
'You realize that if my friends see this--' Elijah says dumbly, and the little fucker collapses giggling, back on his haunches, with white teeth flashing and sparkling up and the eight years are rudely stripped away again. He's twelve, and his eyes are older but he's still a boy. Elijah knows, knows how it is to have always been old.
He can remember filming asylum and people talking over his head-- 'put him there, and don't let the hair get in his eyes.' Elijah knows how to use his eyes. He thinks Daniel knows too.
Their eyes meet now in silence. the cap is back on the Sharpie but he hasn't given it back. a car rushes by the alley, making blurry red pools on the dampened street from the rain earlier.
What are his eyes saying? And how much of it does this--child--understand?
Elijah looks away, casts about for something else to fix his eyes on until this looming sense of tragic discontent dispells itself. He's too drunk already. There's a lit window high up across the street, glowing curtains without a shadow on them, the breath of movement almost unremarked as the empty hand settles on his arm, and Daniel presses the Sharpie back into his other hand, curled fingers in Elijah's palm like a finished circuit, and says softly, 'Thank you.'
04.
emma watson's mother is standing with a drink between elijah and the door for long enough for him to mentally phrase ten things that would be progressively stupider to say to dan, who, hair unruffled except by the wind and shirt still tucked in, is a few yards away. well, actually, calling them ten things is a bit generous, as they all boil down to -- he doesn't know what. the same thing, he's sure. 'when will i see you again' and 'who are you, really' and 'i think you remind me of someone' and 'can i call you? but not like that.' all rolled into one.
in the end he doesn't say any of it. he wants a drink--he could seriously use some instant forgetting--but he knows that's not any wiser than leaving without billy and dom would be, and the only thing stupider than those would be drinking and then leaving with them. he tries to indicate via chin-jerks that he wants to leave and when that doesn't work, he plows through the crowd to arm's reach of billy's sleeve.
outside he has two cigarettes before they show up, but he's grinding the last one out when a blast of music lets dom out the door. he looks up grinning just in time to catch dom, who's taken a flying leap off of the second step onto his back. "oof," he says good-naturedly.
"where'd you vanish to, mate?"
"off in the closet with the lovely miss watson," billy jokes, and they all make the appropriate noises.
and they never discuss it again.
the two towers premieres in london, and there is no one under the age of eighteen at the premiere, although there are twelve men shorter than elijah with dark hair. orlando is wearing a white shirt, and to make up for that, a tie with polka dots that could have come directly from dr. seuss. no one is sure whether the shirt was supposed to be that transparent or not, and of course orli only says 'yes,' and he winds up having to wear elijah's jacket with the sleeves too short because they're the only two in blue suits.
elijah is having one of those days where you think you hear your name over your shoulder for a split second, and then you realize you haven't even before you can turn around, where you think a streak of gold like a bird or a falling leaf has brushed the edge of your vision and when you look, an ornate picture frame steadies itself (mrs. watson stood a few feet to the left of there with a glass of champagne that she was holding so tightly it looked like the stem might break).
when elijah finds the back stairs again, it is really too cold to be without a coat. he hasn't brought any cigarettes with him, so he watches his breath steam on the air, and thinks about a phonecall from his mother and about whether he should do an independent film that will hardly pay anything, which viggo cornered him about earlier in the evening. he is not sitting in the same spot.
orlando has a thing that he used to say in interviews, which interviewers never knew whether to believe, about how he doesn't watch tv. elijah is sometimes too busy to watch tv, but if he ignored it that would be saying--what? he doesn't see daniel radcliffe again until the premiere of the prisoner of azkaban, but when his eyes collide with the slender--taller--shoulderblades across the room, he is not surprised by the length of the hair (recently cut), and when daniel turns he is not surprised by the shavings of baby fat that have vanished from the planes of the pale face.
he nods, and then smiles, and daniel smiles, and then nods. he's wondering how long he has to wait before he can get drunk loud enough to not wonder about the back steps, but it only takes them half an hour anyway.
after a year he's almost afraid the first words out of his mouth will be 'can i call you,' and he's actually opening his mouth, and he doesn't know what he's going to say. it hasn't rained in london for a week and it's warmer than it was at this time last year and daniel is looking the same way he is, at the sunset-dipped mouth of the alley, instead of at him.
'this was a birthday present,' daniel says with a trace of irony.
'what was?'
'the premiere, the movie--it's a little late, maybe, but i had to work on my birthday, so--' he waves expressively and the wave takes in elijah. then he laughs. 'i don't know what i mean.'
you'd think it would be hard to talk. it isn't; it's easy. elijah smiles, 'good.'
05.
'how many movies are you going to make?' elijah asks casually. he isn't even looking--dan could have walked away and he wouldn't have seen, as long as he's been rubbing the back of his neck and frowning at the chrome sprinkler head in the wall. he thinks, though, that daniel won't. the voice comes from near his shoulder.
'there are seven books, but i'll probably get horrible acne before the last one.'
elijah looks at him thoughtfully. 'you're fourteen?'
he is, and his skin is like raw silk: not fine-grained, not porcelain like elijah's, but unreally smooth and ridiculously pale. what should be ridiculous, but is instead unearthly.
'so,' says elijah, 'you'll still be doing this when you're nineteen.' he would have had to stop to do the math there; he's a nervous wreck, rubbing the back of his neck because his cuticles are already bleeding, jiggling one of his knees and wishing he could pace, but there's not enough room. he would have had to stop but he doesn't, because of course he knows how old dan is and he knows how many books there are too, now. he did the math months ago.
dan's eyelashes lift suddenly and their eyes meet, although just for a split second, and then he looks away. 'maybe.' if you look at it sideways, 'this' doesn't have to mean movies. 'i tried a cigarette once,' he says. his hands are in his pockets and he's almost unreally calm. when elijah frowns swiftly he's smiling and solemn at once like some sort of confused yet benevolent angel. he might as well be moonlit all the time, though they're between the table with the shrimp and the table with the punch.
'bad habit,' elijah manages to get out, and coughs for almost a second before he starts laughing. 'no, really. it's stupid.'
daniel raises an eyebrow. are fourteen year olds allowed to do that, lij thinks crazily? in public? he's almost drawling when he answers, 'i figured that out right at first.'
oh.
yes.
one thing elijah has never been good at is calmness. waiting he can do--auditions, callbacks--but he can't wait calmly and he couldn't if his life depended on it. his fingernails are ragged nubs, and when he can't bite them anymore he picks at them, and then he pulls the threads out of the cuffs of his shirts. he has one long-sleeved t-shirt--he thinks billy left it in his apartment maybe--with a stray thread sticking out of the cuff, only it's not really a thread but the end of the seam. no matter how long he pulls at it, it stays. it took him weeks to figure this out--it nearly drove him crazy. he bites it a lot, when he wears this shirt, and the end is looking nearly as frazzled as elijah often feels. going through the laundry barely makes it more respectable.
it's probably just as well, in fact, that he doesn't go in to watch the movie at the premiere. he sees it later with orli in the theaters--at 2 fucking am--and it's good, but it's bad enough in the movie theater. the scar on harry potter's forehead is disgustingly obviously fake and it makes him wince away.
maybe to make up for this, he goes to the fourth premiere--it's surreal, nearly just like the first two with mrs. watson in a purple silk dress and crocodile pumps, and j.k. rowling looking like she could have taken eye-makeup advice from liv. emma watson herself, in fact, is the main difference: whatever difference there is between a twelve-year-old boy and a fourteen-year-old one is magnified a hundred times in a girl. some fourteen year olds are awkward. emma has the look of hermione; she will never be awkward, and her real hair is the kind shampoo commercials are made of. out of stage makeup--and in real makeup--you can almost see the screen credits, post-harry-potter, written on her forehead, or her bare white arms.
daniel looks almost the same as he did at fourteen, only stretched all over--even his cheekbones and his jaw are stretch-stretching out of the flesh of his face, if you look very closely--but only then, because from a distance it's the same carefully-messy-cut dark hair, the same pale triangular face and pouting mouth. not very many people are looking closely. when they stand next to each other this time, daniel is taller than elijah.
'want a smoke?' he smirks, and his voice is starting to change.
good god. his voice is changing. there's a sort of hovering, near-baritone timbre to it. 'no,' elijah says firmly. 'you don't smoke,'
and dan abruptly switches expressions to pitiful, 'no, but...'
'i bet someone's spilled beer on the doorstep,' says elijah slowly. he is not going out back with sixteen-year-old daniel radcliffe who has his--
--who HAS HIS HAND ON HIS ARM. elijah chews on his thumbnail while daniel says,
'i can hardly hear you in here,' and then, thank god, he drops his hand.
they can hardly hear each other for the whole party, and elijah talks to him for a lot of it--they do a lot of nodding, and elijah nibbles shrimp and his cufflinks and the corner of his mouth until he splits his lip. emma watson offers him lip gloss with a pitying air, but he prefers to wallow in the pain. each shrimp past his lips is a little sting, a reminder.
elijah makes it home to la and thinks a lot about independent films, the kind whose premieres show up as part of a page of celebrity snapshots in the back of vanity fair, the kind without red carpets. when he sees his agent, the first thing he hears is 'get some sunglasses. you know drinking water prevents a hangover?'
fuck.
and the first time he picks up the phone in his apartment again, while he's still rubbing his toe on the carpet where it hurts from having kicked the wall, he doesn't recognize the voice. 'hallo,' it says britishly, and tremors.
oh shit. elijah says, 'hi.'
dan says wryly, 'i got your phone number. a late birthday present.'
he kicks the baseboard again, same spot, leaving a little black smear. eventually there's going to be a dent.
06.
so many things are so surreal that he doesn't have time for all of them. he hasn't filmed rotk for five years, but until it was out in the theaters and the last round of publicity appearances was over, it wasn't really over. he's reading bad scripts because dom and billy advocate it as a fun escape from relentlessly good and artsy ones, and he finds himself thinking about making one for the money, even though he has enough money to never work another millisecond in his life. he's living in his mother's back yard, and his little sister has moved out, but now that she doesn't live one yard away she's a lot fonder of leaving news clippings and illegible notes taped to his door and free fresh-baked breakfast on his kitchen table. he's seeing less of her, but he's eating better.
billy comes over and opens his refrigerator out of curiosity to find it filled with spoiled chinese food. 'ugh!' says billy, holding his nose, and makes elijah clean the kitchen.
'what have you been up to?' says billy, lounging inelegantly on elijah's favorite barstool and eating easter-colored peanut m&m's.
elijah has, as a matter of fact, spent the last month debating with himself whether he can really call dan, now that he has the number. he wrote it on his hand, against his better judgement, the first time, and he memorized it before he could stop himself. 'uh,' says lijah, 'oh. reading. shit, you know... nothing?' he offers the last tentatively, but he can't fool billy. billy puts his hands on his hips like an aging queen and raises his eyebrows. 'i don't know,' says elijah unhappily.
'uh-huh. DOM!'
it figures. where one of them goes, the other follows. dom enters the room like a batter sliding home, skidding on his scruffy sneakers right into the edge of the counter. he flops halfway into billy's lap and opens his mouth for a green m&m. billy puts it on his tongue and flicks his nose with a fingertip. dom mock-bites and makes an unconvincing growling noise. elijah has smeared congealed pizza grease down the length of his forearm, trying to stuff a box in the trash can without looking. he looks around helplessly for more trash bags.
'what's up, mate?' says dom, and scarfs another handful of pastel candy.
billy is nothing if not prompt. 'he's a mess,' says billy.
elijah whines, 'literally and figuratively.' he can't get a paper towel from the rack without letting what used to be a pizza a very long time ago fall on the floor. dom oozes from one side of billy to the other, spinning the stool around, to get elijah a towel. the stool spins, billy squeaks indignantly, and dom shows all his teeth in an alarming grin. then the phone rings and elijah opens his mouth, but before he can say anything, billy has answered it.
'hello,' he chirps.
lijah scowls and rips the paper towel roll from dom's hands. 'shit, shit, shit.'
'what?' says dom, surprised. 'you missed a spot--'
billy is making a face that elijah would want to take a picture of if he weren't looking head-on at at least several years of merciless ribbing. he's got his mouth open to speak, and he's nodding but can't get a word in, and finally he just interrupts. 'lijah,' he says brightly, 'it's for you.'
'that's the other one,' says dan. 'it's billy, isn't it, the other hobbit. is dom there?'
'uh, yeah,' says elijah, and hopes that he's not blushing. he cleares his throat and smiles wanly at dom and billy. 'yeah, they're here.'
'cool.' an awkward little pause. elijah looks at the ceiling.
'listen--'
'okay, then--'
elijah stops and starts again and so does dan. 'go ahead.'
'go. oh. if you're busy then i guess i'd better.' he'd better not have called in the first place, but he seems to be trying so hard, he's probably gritting his teeth, apparently glaringly curious, or maybe just a little crestfallen. he's so fifteen years old that it hurts.
'ah, no,' says elijah, giving up on the paper towel. oh, for god's sake, says his internal voice, hang up. but he wipes his hands on his pants, and leaves the room, cupping his hand around the receiver. he almost trips on the second bar stool, which dom's kicked into the middle of the room and is resting his feet in, on his way out. 'i've got a minute.'
'i'm just saying i was right,' dom is saying when he comes back.
'today, the last word, tomorrow, the world,' billy retorts. 'dominic has your birthday present somewhere in there, elijah.' he throws a pink m&m and it hits elijah's forehead.
meanwhile, dom has emerged from the brown paper bag. 'i know it's not your birthday yet,' he's saying innocently, 'but we got drunk last night and bought them and then we didn't want to wait.' and he turns it upside down in front of elijah, who puts out his hands futilely to try to catch a stack of five books, a few red and blue boxed action figures, and three dvds. most of it's on the floor and he's left staring at dan's face in miniature, on a barbie doll.
07.
elijah at fifteen was a joyless and calculating very small adult with a squeaky voice, although he passed as an overachieving hollywood child easily. dan has a voice trembling on the edge of deep. it's going to be deep. right now it's uneven and it doesn't hide a lot. dan doesn't have that polished self-control that fifteen-year-old elijah had. he's sensitive and nervous, an introvert who's not too skilled at disguising when he'd rather be somewhere else. and he's either not calculating at all, or calculating beyond elijah's understanding.
'hello?'
'hello,' he sort-of whispers.
'hi, dan,' says elijah. 'is there any reason you don't want to raise your voice above three decibels?'
'yes.' a muffled sound: he's putting his hand over the mouthpiece. then a sucking rustling sound. when he comes back, the background noise is gone. 'but it's a secret.'
'a secret.'
'everything that happens on the set,' says dan, getting awkwardly fifteen-years-old solemn and forgetting all about the joke, 'and people are always leaking things, and then you don't get asked anything you can say the answers to except "did you learn anything making this film?".'
'a secret,' says elijah. 'that's cool.'
pause for dan to blush. 'yeah.'
in april it's the same. 'hello?'
'hello.'
'dan. how's it going?'
a laugh, and 'do you always answer the phone like that?'
may: 'hello?'
'hello.'
'dan--' he didn't like this, always as if it were an utter surprise. fifteen-year-old elijah would never have called back in may. he didn't like it, but he was always smiling when he said it. 'what's up?'
'you haven't learned yet that nothing's ever up, have you?' said dan. 'if you want to hear about the fight emma had with the makeup artist--'
in the hottest part of july: 'hello.'
'it's dan. i know you're wondering why i called, but before you ask, i'll just admit i don't have a reason. i'm bored, and i wanted to hear your voice.'
elijah's mouth is dry. he swallows with some difficulty. 'oh,' he says. 'all right.'
08.
in december they haven't spoken in three months. elijah's been partly filming, but mostly just sort of living, in italy. he flies into london in the middle of the day. they plunge down through a layer of clouds in the plane, and land on a clear but dim day, a sea of london gray like the inside of a swimming pool. it's too dark inside to justify sunglasses, and the holiday crush makes him nervous so he eats his lunch at the airport cafe with a hat crushed over his eyes before he goes to look for a cab.
'shit,' says orli with genuine regret. 'look, don't hurry and i'll get back by the time you get there. did you know the new harry potter movie's premiering tomorrow?'
'it is?' says elijah politely, and slurps seeds off a dill pickle spear. 'weird.' he didn't even have any suits in italy, so he goes to the premiere in a pair of orli's too-long pants and a dress shirt, which, when he gets there, are soaked through because orli is trying, but not yet succeeding, to become more mature and responsible, and insists they take a walk after dinner. there are black puddles all over the pavement when they get out of the cab. elijah wrings out the hem of his shirt where he's been splashed and brushes at droplets trying to soak through the shoulders.
'next,' says orli, 'you'll shake like a dog,' and drags him inside, where the party is in full swing. over an oriental carpet, inside a gilt frame, elijah catches a glimpse of black hair in a mirror, but it's not him. tom felton is talking to some suits; he keeps shrugging nervously inside his jacket. he catches alan rickman's eye and gets a raised eyebrow, possibly at the resemblance to dan--who's nowhere in sight. a producer is wandering in his direction, and elijah turns away before he can intercept an opinion on his latest work.
he should have gotten there earlier. the back steps, when he finds them again, seem smaller than he remembers and cold in the hushed drumming of rain, falling again in fat droplets, far apart. there's a puddle under the last step, a familiar chip in the railing's paint, and no one sitting there. the cement is dark gray with water at the edges of the overhang. he perches on the rail and lights a cigarette to keep from nibbling his fingernails.
five minutes pass. the rain slowly wets the back of elijah's shirt. ten cars rumble past, and then he stops counting. there's a bird overhead that might be a hawk, but he thinks fancifully that it's an owl, and flicks his ash over the railing. he's getting cold, clenching his teeth to keep from shivering.
'hi,' comes from behind him with no warning. he almost falls off the railing. when he looks around dan's out of the shadow, squinting up at him; he must have been standing back against the building, or have walked around from the side.
'uh.' elijah is blank and dumb. 'hi.' he doesn't know to step back from the rail until dan gestures, and then he puts his hands on it and jumps up and over it with a neat swing of his hips and legs. now he's definitely taller.
but he still has the same tentative smile, as though he's afraid of something, while his eyes argue with his mouth and whisper, i know what you're thinking. i know what you're going to do. elijah drops the cigarette and grinds it out with his toe.
'been awhile.' he looks like he's playing a part in a movie leaning on the railing, although maybe not a very good movie. the lighting is poor, and his expression is unreadable. but he lounges like a pro, his feet braced apart, elbows back, hands clasped around the railing framing his hips.
'yeah,' elijah agrees cautiously. oh, the hell with it. 'too long. i'm sorry.' it's just... he can't finish the speech yet. italy? being fucked-up? did you really get my phone number as a present?
dan's hands clench around the rail.
they watch the cars drive by and catch up with shoots, parents, and dan's changeable taste in music with the kinds of pauses you find in a bar when there's a football game on the television. dan is tired of smashing pumpkins, cautiously interested in triphop, doubtful about disco, and irritated with what he calls the harry potter 'package.'
'at least frodo is kind of a badass,' elijah says. 'i mean, if you have to be typecast as someone. i've got my own action figure and everything. more than one. and in germany, these freaky marionettes.'
dan laughs, 'i bet i have more toys than you do.'
elijah mutters, 'yeah, and i have every one.'
dan's head comes up and he squints a little, 'sorry?'
'dom's life's mission,' says elijah uneasily, and squashes the impulse to edge further away. 'there must be forty of the buggers. they don't look like you at all.'
'what?' daniel laughs. he puts his hand on elijah's knee to turn him so they're facing more fully and elijah tenses a little, but he allows it--he's not fifteen, anyway, he's sixteen and he knows dan's mother, and they're friends.
elijah makes a decision. 'it started as a birthday present. that day you called and dom answered the phone?'
dan's grin is the slow kind, that starts outside his eyes and in the corner of his mouth. 'yeah?'
'i was cleaning the refridgerator and the phone rang. when i got back, dom turned this brown paper bag upside down and all this harry potter stuff just came raining down--' the rain's picked up, just a foot from elijah's other knee, soaking his pants through.
dan's laughing, and elijah's giggling.
'--the books, a book on tape, all these action figures, harry and hermione and the magic... cauldron...? there's this little rubber owl...' dan shrieks.
'that thing is sick. they bought the cauldron--but that's a toy from chamber of secrets!'
elijah forgets what he's going to say for an instant, watching the animated face and the changeable smiles flitting across the delicate features. daniel is just getting old enough that laughter doesn't make him look twelve, like it did to elijah until just a few years ago. in a moment the silence registers, though, and he cocks his head a little. one eyebrow rises. his mind's wandering all over the place. elijah blinks, and shakes his head.
into the silence comes more of the rain, until the mouth of the alley's not entirely visible and the water's condensing and dripping on daniel's glasses.
'you'll be missed,' elijah says out.
dan looks down. his hand is still on elijah's knee. then he looks up and shrugs, 'but i'm so wet." elijah doesn't blink, just stares back at him for a while--it's something he doesn't like to do, looking too long, even if he's not meeting anyone's eyes--it makes him nervous. he needs to jump around. but from the beginning he's stared at dan, an oddly quiet exercise even when they're talking.
he's so solemn, wrinkling his nose to keep his glasses up, the same height as elijah sitting because his tallness is all those long legs bent grasshopper-like in front of them, with their calves pressing together. there's even a single drop of water on one of his cheeks, and it even has a little bit of light reflected in it. outside the warm damp circle under the overhang the rain drives at an angle and dimples the surface of a puddle with a single highlight, the reflection of a streetlamp, not too far different.
he sighs, and daniel unconsciously sighs too. elijah bites his lip, takes a breath and kisses him.
End